Confessions of a Carnivore

Smart, wicked-funny political satire from one of our favorite So Cal writers, author of award-winning short story collection California Transit. In this one an animal rights theater collective advocates for our primate cousins with a gorilla (sic) theater troupe — Andrew Tonkovich, OC Bookly.

As you may have seen from my blog post in March 2014, I am very happy to say that my novel, Confessions of a Carnivore, is now published by Fomite Press. So let me salute the vision of Marc Estrin and Donna Bister who love cats as I do and created this “anti-capitalist” publishing house in the free city of Burlington, Vermont.

The character doing the confessing is Rae. She wants David–but he’s a cult member and gay. Lyle wants Rae–but he’s a baboon. The novel charts human and animal behavior and human and animals rights post-9/11 through life at the LA Zoo and the antics of the Gorilla Theater troupe.

Marc Estrin–besides being a novelist and musician, etc. etc.–is an activist and a veteran of the great Bread and Puppet Theater, so you can see we’re on the same wavelength. When I showed him the image above–which may or may not end up being cover art and which to me was simply a beehive panel from Slovenia–he immediately recognized it as the “Hunter’s Funeral.” Thanks to Marc, I now know that my painted panel is the folk art version of the original woodcut by Moritz von Schwind that inspired the Frère Jacques Funeral March in Mahler’s First Symphony.

I am looking forward to working with and learning more from Fomite.

By the way, a fomite is a medium capable of transmitting infectious organisms from one individual to another. I try.

Shelagh Connor Shapiro interviewed me for Write the Book radio show. The archived podcast can be found for download here.

February 11, 2015: I just heard from Midge Raymond of Ashland Creek Press about the thoughtful review of Among Animals by Prof. Ashley Reis. My story in the anthology, cited in the review, is also set at the LA Zoo and touches on some of the themes developed in more depth in Confessions of a Carnivore.